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Technology PioneerMaking Happy Future through Digital Innovation

Organization

Introduction of Research

Mobile Application Research Department

  • Small Cell Basestation Software
    Since the advent of mobile devices with high wireless communication capabilities such as smartphones and tablets, the volume of mobile data traffic has continued to grow and is expected to keep surging. As existing technologies that have been developed mainly for marcocells show clear limitations to meet the exponentially growing demand despite their success to date, emerging technologies for Small Cells are receiving a great deal of attention as means of increasing area spectral efficiency as well as providing better quality-of-service (QoS) to users.
    Small Cells were often referred to as femtocells in 3G wireless technologies, and conceptually considered as home eNodeBs in 3GPP Release 8/9 for 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution). The distinctive features of Small Cells in contrast to macrocells are low power consumption and low cost, which make it viable options to deploy Small Cells to serve smaller coverage areas, to reduce out-of-service areas as well as to act as urban hotspots.
    Software development for Small Cells, as part of Ultra Dense Network technologies, is a key enabler in improving area spectral efficiency, increasing user-centric data throughput, and enhancing energy efficiency, and more.
    In the initial stage (March, 2014 ~ February, 2016), the Small Cell base stations software developed based on 3GPP Release 10 has been loaded on commercial Small Cell hardware and tested with commercial mobile devices.
    In the subsequent stage (March, 2015 ~ February, 2018), features aimed for commercial use will be added and research on leading 5G technologies will follow. Listed below are notable topics in software development for Small Cells:

    - Protocol stacks that support 3GPP Release 8 ~ 13 specifications(MAC/RLC/PDCP/GTP/RRC/S1AP/X2AP)
    - TDD/FDD Mode, CA(Carrier Aggregation), eMBMS
    - LTE-A Pro: combining license and unlicensed carriers, NB-IOT
    - MAC scheduler algorithms
    - Interference mitigation and energy saving algorithms for 5G UDNs
    - RRM algorithms for call admission control, hand-over, power control
    - Algorithms for SONs (Self-Organizing Networks)
    - RAN (Radio Access Network) virtualization for UDNs
    - Setup of Small Cells systems and testbeds for 3GPP Release 13

     Image <Small Cell Basestation Software Archtecture>

     Image <Small Cell Basestation Software Demonstration>
  • High-Speed NFC (Zing)
    Today, we are surrounded by all kinds of simple objects in our everyday lives, including a variety of road signs, advertisement posters, exhibition items at art galleries and museums. However, these dumb objects are expected to evolve into smart objects carrying useful information in the future. With the advent of powerful mobile devices such as smart-phones, not only mobile devices and smart home appliances, but also other objects will be accessed using smart-phones to instantaneously retrieve even large amount of information. The information on the objects will be stored in the form of a “tag” that does not require a battery, and will be transmitted to user devices on demand.

    The objective of this research is to develop a novel technology to retrieve a large amount of media data from an object with no battery from a very short distance, typically smaller than 10 cm. One of the advantages of this type of on demand realtime data transmission technology between a smart-phone as a reader (reader device) and a battery-less object as a tag (tag device) is that there is almost no interference among wireless devices in near proximity, and thus the spectrum efficiency is maximized. Since the tag device is powered by the reader device through magnetic induction when needed, the tag device does not have to be equiped with a battery, making the maintenance very easy. A mobile device such as a smart-phone or a tablet PC can achieve 3.5 Gbps transmission rate with a transmit power of 100 mW or less.

    Using the above usage concept and the technology characteristics, this research project apply not only to advertisement services and guidance services that are able to transmit massive contents in the tag at a realtime but also to high speed data services. It also apply to massive storages as a wireless USB.

     Image <High-Speed NFC (Zing)>
  • NB-IoT
    Narrow-Band IoT (NB-IoT) is a technology being standardized by the 3GPP standards body. This technology is a narrow band radio technology specially designed for the Internet of Things (IoT). Special focus of NB-IoT are on coverage expansion, low cost, long battery life and large number of devices.
    NB-IoT project is a market-oriented project to develop a mobile communication technology that can apply to the monitoring of such indoor and outdoor sensors, meter, tag, and facility. This project supports the small and medium-sized enterprises through the joint development of the terminal and the device, and can contribute to the development of domestic IoT industry through the test services with mobile communication provider. In addition, this project contributes to domestic IoT ecosystem composition and activation by continuously support the development of terminal technology of small and medium-sized enterprises, which is realized by the build of basestation in the form of an open testbed.

     Image <NB-IoT System Overview>
  • MHN Mobile Wireless Backhaul
    It is very difficult to guarantee the performance of the TEs in moving objectives with high mobility due to the serious Doppler shift and the cell-edge effect. Especially, the requirements for guaranteeing the voice call QoS is getting more and more strict when on-board user group contains massive number of users. Furthermore, the capability of providing stable performance in the high-speed environment has been put forward. Therefore, the high-speed mobile wireless backhaul employing mmWave frequency band is in development in Mobile Application Research Department.

    MHN mobile wireless backhaul system concept
    - The developed high-speed mobile wireless backhaul system employs the FACS (Flexible Access Common Spectrum: 24~26.5 GHz) frequency band and it is able to provide the data rate of up to 1 Gbps/Train with 500 MHz bandwidth. The WiFi or small cells can be adopted for network access inside the moving objectives. The pre-5G demonstration, subway demonstration etc. are on-going and the developed high-speed mobile wireless backhaul system is being technically verified for the purpose of commercialization in Daejeon City and a certain part of route of Seoul subway line # 8.

    Radio unit deployed in subway line 8 tunnel
    - The developed key techniques in high-speed mobile wireless backhaul system include the novel uplink reference signal design against the severe Doppler shift and the antenna beamforming technique with single frequency multi-flow. Furthermore, the core network techniques including low latency handover and mobility management techniques etc. using the characteristics of the fast moving objectives are also being developed.
    The currently developed system employs 500MHz bandwidth and it is capable of providing up to 1 Gbps data rate per train. The future plan is to develop the system with the capable of achieving the transmission rate of 10 Gbps/Train(@500 km/hr mobility) with 1 GHz bandwidth and MIMO technology. Additionally, the unlicensed frequency band of 24 ~ 26.5 GHz, specified by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, will be adopted.

     Image <MHN mobile wireless backhaul system concept>

     Image <Radio unit deployed in subway line 8 tunnel >

     Image <Demonstration of MHN system on running subway train>
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